Winter Hawk mg-3

by Thomas Craig

  "… every, every week — don't, can't — remember…told them, told them — no, told, no! — told them when, when… arrived from Semipal, pal, pala — tin… sk….." The sweat was soaking his shirt, running on his face as if he had just plunged his head under a pump. … know — know no… nothing, everything….."

  "Tell us what they know, in every detail."

  "Do they know dates, times?"

  And so it would go on. Not long now. Serov looked at his watch. Nine-forty. Kedrov was like a tooth where all the enamel and even the soft inner had been drilled through; they were down to the nerve. He'd told them almost everything, it was all on tape.

  "Lightning?" he snapped, impatience disturbing him, spoiling his sense of satisfaction. "Kedrov, what do you know about Lightning? What have you told the KGB about Lightning?"

  Kedrov did not even look in his direction, but continued to stare as if he could see nothing ahead of him. But he spoke almost immediately, answering Serov.

  "… noth — not asked, nothing, told him — don't know noth— know, know. Heard — in the shithouse… heard, heard, told noth, nothing….." His voice babbled on, his will a tiny, shrunken ball kicked around between the questioners. He could not help himself.

  Priabin knew from Rodin, then, only from Rodin. Another tiny jigsaw puzzle piece that fitted satisfactorily. He rubbed his chin once more, after indicating that he had no further questions. Besides, it was becoming too routine, he was losing interest.

  Nine-fifty. He looked up — not really looking at Kedrov anymore or even listening to the questions and answers, but half sunk in a vague reverie — and one of his lieutenants beckoned to him. He mouthed urgency, even as his eyes surveyed the room, and his nose wrinkled at its scents and odors.

  Serov indicated that the interrogation should continue, and moved to the door.

  "What is it?" he snapped, closing the door on Kedrov's babble.

  "Comrade General Rodin — he's here!" For a moment, Serov could not understand the cause of the lieutenant's concern, even surprise. Then he remembered.

  "Calm down. You know nothing. If you can't keep your face straight, stay out of his sight. Understand?" Rubbish — he always had rubbish to deal with. This one, part of the team that had removed Rodin, and worried as soon as the little shit's father shows up. For Jesus' sake! "Where is the general?"

  "In your office, sir."

  "Very well — oh, go and get yourself a cup of coffee, man. And stop filling your trousers. It's over and done with. Go on."

  Serov waved him away and turned to the stairs. One flight up, why wait for the elevator? He composed his features to a mask of enthusiasm and success as he climbed the stairs. A window showed him the square, and the Cosmonaut Hotel on its other side. Traffic, normality, sunlight, cobbles, and statuary. When he entered his office, he must appear to greet Rodin with the news of Kedrov's successful interrogation. Rodin's news would — must — be like a douche of cold water thrown over that enthusiasm. Yes.

  He mounted the half-flight of steps, leaving the view of the square. A patrolling helicopter had buzzed above it like a fat bee. He paused for a moment outside his office door, then went in. His male secretary nodded toward the inner office. Serov entered the room, his face bright.

  "General, Kedrov is spilling everything he knows," he began, crossing the thick carpet. Rodin was standing near the window, looking out across the square. "The Americans obviously know, but they have no proof, none at—" He paused, measuring his reaction as carefully as some dangerous chemical, then said: "General, what is the matter? You — don't look well. Please—" He indicated a chair. Rodin's face was ashen, as if he, too, had newly adopted a mask, one of pain and grief. He'd seen his son's body. "What is it, General? What is it?"

  Rodin held his wrist tightly, perhaps for more than mere support.

  "Valery," was all he said.

  "Your son, General. Yes, what is the matter?"

  "My son is dead."

  Rodin would not let go of Serov's arm, thus he could not move that dramatic half-step away from the old man. His features were in closeup; Rodin was inspecting them searchingly. Yet there was something blank about his eyes, like those of the drugged Kedrov.

  "Dead? I don't understand."

  Rodin's eyes studied him as carefully as the fingers of a blind person identifying braille. Serov produced shock, concern, sympathy. Then Rodin let go of his wrist and turned back to the window.

  "Suicide," he whispered. Serov's frame relaxed. He was surprised at his own tension.

  "Suicide? How can you—

  "I saw him!" Rodin wailed. "I found him, earlier." He turned back to Serov. "Who? Why?" Careful, careful, Serov thought, this is the moment. "What made him do it? Who is responsible?" There had been nothing, no trace of honest expression for Rodin to witness. He turned away once more. Sunlight haloed his form. "Was it you, Serov?" "I?"

  "Hounding that actor, getting rid of him? Or that KGB colonel? Who was it?"

  "Your son was being questioned, perhaps pressured—"

  "This man Priabin." Rodin growled. "What does he want? Why is he — was he interested in Valery? This — drugs business?"

  "Perhaps. Perhaps something else."

  Rodin turned quickly. "Lightning? I can't believe—"

  "Who knows what he suspects, General?"

  "Then find out."

  "Arrest him?"

  "If necessary. If he, if he…" His voice cracked and he turned to the window. There was no color, not even anger, in his features. "Find out, Serov. Find out if he was responsible."

  "Of course, General."

  "I want — my son will be flown back to Moscow, and he will receive a full military funeral. Is that understood? You will make the necessary arrangements. There will be no breath of any — irregularities. He died — in the course of duty. Duty. Do you understand?"

  "Completely, General."

  "I want to know, Serov, whether that man was responsible for my son's suicide."

  "You will, General."

  There was silence, then, for a long time. Serov quietly moved to his desk. Rodin continued to stare out of the window. There was a new kind of frailty about the slope of his shoulders, about the way in which his head seemed cocked to one side. Serov glanced through the reports on his desk.

  Afghanistan? He read the sheet quickly. That's how… he couldn't have made it. They'd shot down his tanker helicopter, evidently, which fitted with Adamov's ridiculous story of filling the tanks of the Hind at a gas station near the Amu Darya. Serov smiled. The American had come on, hadn't given up. How desperate the Americans must be for proof, how desperate.

  He looked up. Rodin was staring at him.

  "Now," he said. "I want to see this American—the American." His voice was younger now, his face reaffirmed in habitual lines and planes.

  "Of course."

  "What condition is he in?"

  'Tired and beaten. Defeated, General, not assaulted."

  "Psychological assessment?"

  "Tough. He will take — time."

  "And he was entirely alone?"

  'Their last, desperate throw of the dice, General. I'm certain of it. They know, but they are impotent without proof. That's why they had to have Kedrov instead of just leaving him to stew."

  "Your search for other Americans has not been abandoned?"

  "No, it's continuing. But I'm sure—

  "Very well." Rodin sighed, but choked off the sound, as if it threatened to remind him of unrelated things. "Then Lightning is safe. But this man, this KGB colonel — he might talk?"

  "To whom, General? Code Green is initiated. He's cut off — inside the fortress, so to speak. He can't communicate with anyone outside. "

  "Arrest him anyway," Rodin snapped. "Arrest Priabin at once."

  * * *

  President John Calvin paused at the top of the passenger steps of Air Force One and waved once more to the television cameras and the rows and clumps of dazzling flashbulbs. He quas
hed all sense of the masquerade that had assailed him during the drive from the White House to Andrews AFB. Even as he had prepared himself for this interrogation — this challenge — by camera, he had been as unfamiliar with his role as an actor bereft of his script. But adrenaline was flowing now, he could play the part expected of him. He could smile, and wave, and brush at his gray hair as it was lifted and distressed by the breeze. His pale cheeks would be the result of the chill, nothing more. His tired eyes would, on TV and in the newspapers, seem concerned, filled with the gravity of the occasion rather than its awful emptiness.

  He waved, suitably serious. The sharp tip of his raincoat collar tapped stingingly against his cheek as the wind blew it. As if trying to wake him from the dreamlike role-playing. Flashbulbs burst out afresh, and he wanted to shout that they had enough pictures to last a lifetime and… He smiled at the cameras. The First Lady was already aboard. Remsburg, the secretary of state, was aboard, Dick Gunther, too; his advisers, his press secretary. Everyone — the whole pack of liars and actors.

  He had made his speech without a stumble or uncalculated pause; but it had wearied him. My fellow Americans, on Thursday, we shall make history… Mockery. Calvin nodded toward the bottom of the passenger steps, at Miles Coltrane, his vice-president, who grinned and suddenly raised his hands, clasped together, in a signal of triumph, like a champion boxer might have given. Like shaking dice, Calvin thought. Miles, you re maybe a better actor than I am. Then Coltrane saluted him and backed away as the ground crew approached the ladder. Calvin looked out over the cameras toward the roped-back crowd, already being shunted farther from the runway. A sea of featureless blobs — black and brown and white faces… My fellow Americans, I leave you to engage upon the greatest betrayal of my country any American citizen has ever contemplated or achieved… He waved once more and stepped back off the passenger steps, ducking his tall frame to pass into the interior of Air Force One.

  Uniforms, civilian clothes, salutes, and acknowledgments. His wife's pale, relieved features. He patted her shoulder, then passed her seat, toward Remsburg and Gunther.

  He understood their expressions, as clearly as if they were miming for his benefit.

  "Nothing — nothing at all?" he snapped, waving his hand at the huge map table in the center of the aircraft's main section. He did not even look down at its surface. Both men seemed surprised at the persistence of optimism.

  "It's twelve hours now, Mr. President," Gunther began. The CIA director had joined them like a man uncertain of his reception. His face was drawn, his eyelids heavy with lack of sleep. Calvin looked at him with the distaste he suspected he might show toward a mirror at that moment.

  "Twelve hours. And you know nothing more than you did then? What the hell is happening over there?"

  The operators and technicians manning the command center studiously avoided the small group around the map table. Senior officers hovered, as if out of their natural element. Calvin saw his wife, Danielle, watching him as if for signs of exertion or illness. Rings flashed on the pale, long fingers of the hand that rested on the seat. The aircraft's captain hovered, too, another frivolous uniform.

  "There's been no signal — no nothing, sir," the director offered. Remsburg's heavy jowls quivered as he shook his head in solemn negation. Gunther merely shrugged.

  "Then I don't have anything?"

  "You could try to challenge Nikitin when you meet before the signing — bargain with the guy," Gunther murmured. "Stall for time — pretend we know what's happening. Maybe even go on TV and call his bluff?"

  "They'd fry me, Dick, and you damn well know that." Calvin looked over their heads, then snapped at the captain: "For Christ's sake, let's get this show on the road, Colonel." The aircraft's captain flinched, then saluted. Calvin shuddered. Already, they would be beginning to despise him. He couldn't stall for time, not even that. No one, no one in the whole damn world would stand for it. "OK, OK — let's take our seats."

  As he sat down next to Danielle and patted her hand — which reached for his but which he would not take and hold — he glanced through the window. The crowd was at an anonymous distance now, hardly distinguishable in the flashing darkness, yet he felt their pressure on him just as surely as if they had surged against the fuselage. He looked into his wife's face. It was drawn, the fine lines around her eyes and mouth were emphasized. He wanted to flee into a contemplation only of her.

  Without proof, he could not delay. Without proof…

  The engine note changed, and he felt the restraint of the brakes. He swallowed, as if fearing air sickness or an accident during takeoff. Danielle grabbed his hand. He felt the impression of one of her rings; it had turned on her narrow finger and dug into his flesh.

  He looked out of the window. Coltrane could still be picked out. He'd been called Uncle Tom by some militant blacks when he agreed to become part of the Calvin ticket. What would they call him now, a party to this deal? He turned back to his wife and attempted to grin. The Inauguration Ball came back suddenly, ambushing him with triumph. Her smile, her pleasure for him that night, amid the whirl of people and the endless handshaking and backslapping and the glittering chandeliers and the brisk waiters and the deals beginning to be struck and the lobbyists to meet. But the success of it, the winning! Now its fragmented scenes merely made him dizzy—

  — like his Inauguration speech, recollected in its most strident and hollow fragments, which now made him want to retch. A time of hope… I pledge this administration to work unceasingly, with every nerve and sinew, in the cause of peace… a planet fouled and desecrated with nuclear weapons… a time of opportunity… on the edge of the abyss we might also be at the border of a Promised Land… our children… a time of hope, time of…

  He shook his head savagely, as if to countermand the aircraft's first movements. He must meet Nikitin tomorrow — he glanced at his watch—today, Wednesday. It was twelve-ten on Wednesday morning. Today. In Geneva. Twenty-four hours before the signing ceremony, and he could not stall or bluff or call Nikitin to show his cards, because if he did, the Russian president would act up his outrage and go directly on TV to challenge him to explain to a desperate world why he wouldn't sign the treaty the billions of inhabitants of the planet were waiting for…

  … all day, on TV screens around the world, they'd have seen the wire being cut and rolled away, that obscenity of a Berlin Wall being dismantled, the bombers going into mothballs and the aircraft carriers in dry dock; the missiles being loaded aboard flatcars and being taken home under joint military supervision. Calvin remembered his own particular desire to see the sleek, black-backed dolphinlike submarines coming home, rendezvousing off the East Coast, from Maine to Florida, emerging like a forgotten and terrible army from beneath the sea. So many of them — the Trident force, the deterrent — rising out of distressed white water…

  … intended as a final symbol and gesture of peace. Every U.S. submarine on the surface, identifiable and heading home.

  Twelve noon. Twenty-four hours before the shuttle was to be launched — no, twenty-eight, Priabin corrected himself feverishly, with inordinate self-criticism for his error. It was to coincide with the signing in Geneva, and Baikonur was — it was twenty-nine hours! Baikonur was four hours ahead of Geneva; the launch was to take place tomorrow afternoon. He rubbed his hand through his already disheveled hair, in reaction to the strange, distracting panic of his concern over time. Time, after all, was irrelevant.

  Katya, he saw, was watching his every movement; like a faithful dog or an animal ready to spring, he did not know. The dog itself was oblivious, untidily heaped near the radiator. Katya had returned him — when? Half an hour ago — before she was aware of Lightning. A time of innocence.

  "I'm sorry," he blurted out. "Sorry I told you. I shouldn't have. I've endangered you."

  Katya shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she murmured; evidently it did. She did blame him for imparting his secret to her. Sunlight fell across his desk, across her pale
hands as she twisted them together on the edge of the desk; across her denims where she had crossed her legs at the knee; across the carpet to the toes of his boots as he stood staring into the blank square of the window, fuzzy in his vision. "It doesn't matter now."

  He moved to her and gripped her shoulder. She flinched. "It does matter," he muttered through clenched teeth. "That's the bloody trouble — it does matter, more than anything else."

  She looked up at him almost wildly. "Then what the hell are you going to do about it, Colonel?" He released her shoulder, as if he had received an electric shock from her, and she turned more fully to face him. "Dudin's got a cold, so he says, the radio room is sealed and guarded, you can't make anything but a local call by telephone, the roads are guarded — I can't do anything, what are you going to do?"

  Having crossed the office, he turned to face her. The dog appeared curious, even alarmed by their raised voices. Its tail banged against the radiator like a soft drumbeat.

  "I'm sorry I told you. It — it just spilled out, as if it were too heavy for me to carry. Christ, Katya, I don't want you involved." Again, he rubbed his hair and began pacing the floor. "I just don't know what to do. There's nothing to do."

  At the roadblock, they had politely, firmly turned him around and pointed him once more in the direction of Baikonur and his own office. GRU troops, supervised by an experienced captain — not that it mattered. The guns were in evidence, the implacability of their obedience to orders like the sharp smell of wood smoke permeating the scene. Even the helicopter had reappeared and accompanied him most of the way back to town. It had been simple. Almost an anticlimax. Turn around, please, Colonel, there's a good boy.

  And he had done so. And sat there, scribbling on a pad like a psychiatrist recording nightmares — schemes and plans that were impossible to put into practice — or pacing the carpet or drinking coffee or smoking. The air of the office was blue with cigarette smoke, thick like that of a crowded bar. And all to no avail. There was no solution. He could not get out of the Baikonur area, could not get to Aral'sk or contact Moscow. And Serov, who knew how much he knew, would make his move soon.